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THE GEORGIC 

A CONTRIBUTION TO THE STUDY OF THE VERGILIAN 
TYPE OP DIDACTIC POETRY 



BY 



MARIE LORETTO LILLY 



& HDtstfertation 



SUBMITTED TO THE BOARD OF UNIVERSITY STUDIES OP THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY 

IN CONFORMITY WITH THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF 

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 

19 16 



BALTIMORE 

J. H. FURST COMPANY 

1917 






' 



THE GEORGIC 



A CONTRIBUTION TO THE STUDY OF THE VERGILIAN 
TYPE OP DIDACTIC POETRY 



! 

BY T/ 



MAEIE LOKETTO LILLY 



a Dissertation 



SUBMITTED TO THE BOARD OF UNIVERSITY STUDIES OF THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY 

IN CONFORMITY WITH THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF 

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 



X 6 



BALTIMORE 
J. H. FURST COMPANY 

1917 



j 



This monograph comprises chapters one, two, and three of a study 
to be published in Hesperia, Supplementary Series, No. 5. Gottin- 
gen, Vanderhoeck and Ruprecht; Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins 
Press. 



tft. . 

>ersity 

1OT 



*3 



IN GKATEFUL MEMORY 
OF 

SISTER MARY MELETIA 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I page 

INTRODUCTION! 1"8 

CHAPTER II 

The Creation of the Georgic Type 9-18 

1. Vergil's Georgics, their relation to the Works and 
Days of Hesiod 9 

2. Subject matter of the Georgics 13 

CHAPTER III 
The Relation of the Georgic to the Pastoral .... 19 

1 . Distinction between the Georgic and the Pastoral . . 19 

2. The Pastoral, a literary type of frequent occur- 
rence, made famous by great poets; the Georgic, a 
literary type coincidental!)' neglected 26 

3. Variations in the development of the Georgic com- 
pared with variations in the development of the 
Eclogue 37 

4. Variations of the Georgic classified 47 



THE GEORGIC 



CHAPTER I 



Introduction 

In 1697, Addison in his " Essay on the Georgics " 1 complains 
of the neglect of these poems and of their confusion with the 
pastoral. " There has been abundance of criticism spent on 
Virgil's Pastorals and Aeneids" he writes, " but the Georgics 
are a subject which none of the critics have sufficiently taken 
into their consideration, most of them passing it over in silence, 
or casting it under the same head with Pastoral — a division by 
no means proper, unless we suppose the style of a Husbandman 
ought to be imitated in a Georgic, as that of a shepherd is in 
Pastoral. But though the scene of both these Poems lies in the 
same place ; the speakers in them are of a quite different char- 
acter, since the precepts of husbandry are not to be delivered 
with the simplicity of a Plowman, but with the address of a 
Poet. No rules therefore that relate to Pastoral, can any way 
affect the Georgics, since they fall under that class of Poetry, 
which consists in giving plain and direct instructions to the 
reader; whether they be Moral duties, as those of Theognis 
and Pythagoras; or Philosophical Speculations, as those of Ara- 
tus and Lucretius; or Rules of practice, as those of Hesiod and 
Virgil" 

One can hardly agree with Addison that the critics have ne- 
glected Vergil's Georgics; and there is evidence that from their 
first appearance the didactics that rival the De Rerum Natura 
were not denied due honor. The long list of translations, and 
the various editions of the Georgics annotated in many lan- 

1 This essay was contributed anonymously as an introduction to Dryden's 
translation of the Georgics. It was written as early as 1693. See Hurd's 
note, The Works of Addison, ed. Bohn, London, 1862, p. 154. 

1 



y 



2 The Georgia 

guages bear witness to the devoted labor spent on Vergil's agri- 
cultural treatises. Various recent publications, 2 moreover, 
testify to the living interest in the poems that have been pro- 
nounced the most finished product of antiquity. But, so far 
as I am able to discover, of the georgic as a type, closely related 
to the pastoral, although essentially different from it, nothing 
definite or detailed has been written in English since Addison's 
complaint in 1697. As for French critics, they seem also to 
have neglected the subject of the georgic as a type. Collections 
of Italian georgics have been edited 3 and there is some Italian 
criticism on the georgic poetry of Italy, 4 but unfortunately 
neither these collections of " Italian Georgics," nor the critical 
essays have so far been accessible to me: of the latter I know 
only what is conveyed by the titles. 

One cannot say that, like the georgic, the pastoral has been 
neglected. With finer understanding of the subject than that 
which is manifest in the age of Addison, the critics have con- 
tinued to discuss the imitations of Vergil and of Theocritus. 
Symonds, 5 with justice, refers to "the whole hackneyed ques- 
tion of Bucolic poetry." Certainly no student can remain igno- 
rant of the pastoral as a type, of its origin, of its characteristics, 
of its developments as a literary genre, of the recurring periods 
of favor and disfavor through which it has passed. But if, 
incidentally, the critics touch upon the difference in type be- 
tween the Eclogues and the Georgics of Vergil, it is usually to 

2 Meta Glass, The Fusion of Stylistic Elements in YergiVs Georgics, N« 
Y., Columbia Univ., 1913; T. F. Royd, The Beasts, Birds, and Bees of Ver- 
gil: a naturalist's handbook to the Georgics, with a preface by W. Warde 
Fowler, Oxford, B. H. Blackwell, 1914; T. C. Williams, The Georgics and 
Eclogues of Vergil, with an introd. by G. H. Palmer, Harvard Univ. 
Press, 1915; Les Georgiques, Texte Latin, par Paul Lejay, Paris, 1915. 

3 1 Poemi Georgici, Francesco Bonsignori, Lucca, 1785; Giovanni Silves- 
tri, Milano, 1826. 

4 Felippo Re, Delia poesia georgica degli Italiani, Bologna, 1809; L. Gi- 
rardelli, Dei poemi georgici nostrali, Goriza, 1900; D. Merlini's Saggio di 
ricerche sulla satira contro il villano, Torino, Loscher, 1894, probably 
treats of poems that fall under the head of mock-georgics. 

5 J. A. Symonds, Studies of the Greek Poets, London, 1902, Vol. n, p. 245. 



Introduction 3 

notice the superiority of workmanship in the latter, or to con- 
trast the general character of the two series of poems. Sellar, 6 
for example, observes that Vergil was marked among his con- 
temporaries as the poet of Nature and rural life. The Eclogues, 
he observes, are of a light type; the general Eoman spirit de- 
manded of its highest literature that it should have either some 
direct practical use or contribute in some way to the sense of 
national greatness. Glover 7 discusses the difference in spirit 
between the Eclogues and the Georgics: " the great note " of the 
Eclogues, youthful happiness, the life of the Shepherd, an easy 
life, touched sometimes by youthful grief that is never incon- 
solable ; in the Georgics, " the grim realization that life involves 
a great deal more work than Menalcas and the rest had thought, 
hard work all the year round, vigilance never to be remitted, 
and labor which it is ruin to relax." In general, however, the 
commentators seem to take it for granted that the reader will 
perceive of necessity the essential difference between the two 
types. Yet one continually finds that, in spite of Addison's 
emphatic protest, students confuse the georgic with the pastoral. 
Of the few writings that I have been able to discover on the 
imitations of the Georgics there is almost nothing that is of any 
value as a study of the type. In Conington's edition of Vergil, 8 
there is a section on the " Later Didactic Poets of Rome," an 
essay that is valuable in the history of the georgic, and that 
gives a general idea of the manner in which the Vergilian model 
was imitated from the earliest period. A piece of work en- 
titled Virgilio nella storia della Poesia Didascalica Latina, by D. 
Renzi, 9 promises valuable information ; but I have been unable 
to consult it. Dunlop 10 has some comments on a few of the 

6 W. Y. Sellar, The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age, Virgil, Oxford, 
1908, pp. 174 ff. 

T T. R. Glover, Studies in Vergil, London, Methuen and Co., 1904, pp. 
30 ff. 

8 J. Conington, The Works of Vergil, London, 1872, Vol. i, p. 389. 

•Avella, 1907. 

10 J. Dunlop, History of Roman Lit. during the Augustan Age. London, 
1828. Vol. m, pp. 138 ff. 



4 The Georgic 

imitations of the Georgics, but his remarks are even more gen- 
eral respecting the type than those of Conington. For example, 
he observes that " The Rusticus of Politian l in Virgilii Georgi- 
con enarratione pronunciata ' is an abridgement of the subject 
of that poem and several passages are nearly copied from it." 
After having briefly considered several other imitations, he 
comments on the great debt of Thomson to Yergil and points out 
passages in the Seasons, imitated, or almost translated, from the 
Georgics. 

Ginguene u has a valuable chapter on the Italian didactics 
of the sixteenth century. He sketches briefly the contents of 
most of the Italian georgics of the period, but altho he com- 
ments generally on the fact that these poems follow Vergil as 
a model, he says nothing of their particular adaptations of the 
features peculiar to the georgic type. Incidentally, he shows 
that other writers, who have considered imitations of the Geor- 
gics, have done so carelessly. An enthusiastic admirer of Luigi 
Alamanni's Coltivazione, Ginguene protests against the French 
neglect of this important poem, a work written and first pub- 
lished in France. In particular he reproaches Jacques Delille. 
Saint-Lambert, and a certain de Eosset. Delille is scored, be- 
cause, in the introduction to his translation of the Georgics, he 
announces that he cannot refrain from speaking of the poems 
for which Vergil has furnished the idea and the model, after 
which announcement, he considers Vaniere's Praedium Rusti- 
cum, Hapin's Jardins, Thomson's Seasons, and Saint-Lambert's 
Saisons, without mentioning Luigi Alamanni. Saint-Lambert 
is reproached, because, in his discours preliminaire, 12 he writes 
of the Georgics of Vergil and of les Georgiques plus detailles de 
Vaniere, and neglects the opportunity of speaking of the georgics 
of Alamanni. De Rosset is complained against, because, in an 

11 P. L. Ginguene, Hist. Lit. d'ltalie, Paris, 1824, 2e ed. T. 9, ch. xxxv, 
pp. Iff. 

" Ginguene" assumes that the reader is familiar with this work : he does not 
state where it is to be found. See J. F. Saint-Lambert, Les Saisons, " Dis- 
cours Preliminaire," Paris, 1795. 



Introduction 5 

introductory discourse on georgic poetry prefixed to a poem on 
agriculture, 13 lie writes at length on Hesiod and at still greater 
length on Vergil, after which he passes abruptly to Kapin and 
Vaniere, without seeming to know that another georgic poet 
(Alamanni) had existed in the meantime. 

Saint-Lambert's discussion 14 is of no value as a study of the 
georgic type as a whole, but it is important in the history of the 
development of the eighteenth century variation of the type due 
to Thomson's Seasons. Delille's introduction 15 is of interest, 
since he makes a defense of the georgic, He also considers 
Vaniere's Praedium Rusticum very briefly and compares it with 
Vergil's Georgics, not, however, with any reference to Vaniere's 
use of the distinctive features of the Vergilian type. This is 
followed by some general criticism of Rapin's Gardens, and 
Thomson's Seasons, and mention is made of the existence of two 
other poems on the seasons by French writers who are not named. 
Delille's preface to L : 'Homme des Champs 16 is of interest with 
respect to the broad meaning of the word " georgic " in French 
poems of this class, but the French critic is no more detailed in 
his discussion of this type than he is in the introduction to his 
translation of the Georgics. Whether Rosset's discourse is of 
value or not, I am unable to say, for his work is 'naccessible 
to me. 

In histories of Italian literature, 17 there occur brief notices 
of Italian didactics, and of Italian georgics, among the latter 

13 The reader's familiarity with de Eosset, as with Saint-Lambert, is as- 
sumed. For a notice of the life of Pierre Fulcrand de Eosset, who died at 
Paris, in 1788, the author of a poem on agriculture in nine books, the first 
six of which appeared at Paris in 1744, the complete edition at Lausanne, 
in 1806, cp. Pierre Larousse, Diet. Univ. de la XIXe Steele, T. 13, p. 1302. 

1A Op. ait. 

15 J. Delille, (Euvres, Les Georgiques, Vol. i, " Discours Preliminaire," ed. 
P. F. Tissot, Paris, 1832-33. 

18 J. Delille, L'Homme des Champs, oil Les Georgiques Francoises, Paris, 
1805, p. 18. 

17 See, for example, G. Tiraboschi, Stor. della Lett. Ital. Milano, 1822-26. 
T. v., p. 864, T. vi, p. 1428, T. yh, pp. 1780, 1786 ff., T. xm, pp. 2119, 
2136, 2137 ff. Stor. Lett, d'ltal, Milano, F. Flamini, " II Cinquecento," pp. 



6 The Georgic 

being considered only poems that treat of agricultural subjects. 
Concerning the relation of these poems to Vergil's didactics, we 
are told at most, however, that they are written in imitation of 
the Georgics. 

Flamini cites a study of Valvasone's Caccia 18 that is probably 
of value ; but I have been unable to see it. Cavicchi 19 shows 
definitely the relations between Vergil and Rucellai, but he does 
not consider Rucellai's use of the chief features of the georgic 
type. Altho Ginguene complains of the French neglect of Ala- 
manni, more appears to have been written on La Coltivazione 
than on any other Italian didactic. In a valuable Verona 
edition of Alamanni's Coltivazione and Rucellai's Api, pub- 
lished 1745, the Vergilian borrowings and imitations are cited 
in the annotations of Giuseppe Bianchini da Prato on La Colti- 
vazione and of Roberto Tito on Le Api. Gaspary mentions 
several studies of La Coltivazione 20 that I have been unable to 
see. Hauvette 21 considers the poem in detail, commenting on 
its relation to Vergil's Georgics, but beyond remarking that 
Alamanni scorns the digressions which are so important a part 
of Vergil's poems, he does not discuss the conventions of the 
georgic. 

Most historians of French literature are silent concerning 
French georgics; histories of English literature have almost 
nothing to say of English georgics. Prefaces to English 

110, 440-2, 538, 574; T. Concari, "II Settecento," 272, 237, 277, 278; G. 
Mazzoni, " L'Ottocento," 78, 774. A. Gaspary, Stor. della Lett. Ital., tr. 
dal Tedesco da Nicdlo Zingarelli, Torino, 1887, V, n, pt. n, pp. 142 ff., 197, 
319. 

18 L. Pizzio, La poesia didascalica e la " Caccia " di E. da Valvasone, 
Udine, 1892. 

M F. Cavicchi, II Libro IV delle Georgiche di Virgilio e " Le Api " di G. 
Rucellai, Teramo, 1900. 

20 F. Caccialanza, Le Georgiche di VvrgiUo e la " Coltivazione " di Luigi 
Alamanni,, Susa, 1892; G. Naro, V Alamanni e la Coltivazione, Siracusa, 
1897; L. Girardelli, Dei poemi georgici nostrali ed in particolare della 
Coltivazione di L. Alamanni, Gorizia, 1900, cp. above, p. 2. 

21 H. Hauvette, Luigi Alamanni (1495-1566), sa vie et son ceuvre, Paris, 
1903, pp. 263 ff. 



Introduction 1 

imitations of the Georgics sometimes contain more or less 
general references to Vergil 22 as the model followed ; occa- 
sionally British borrowings from Vergil are noted by the bor- 
rowers themselves. 23 ]STo critic can pass over Thomson's debt 
to Vergil in The Seasons. Logie Robertson 24 has some important 
comments on it. Macanlay 25 dwells upon it at greater length ; 
and Otto Zippel 26 in his variorum edition of The Seasons notes 
the resemblances and borrowings with all their changes, line 
for line. Lejay 27 discussing French imitations of the Georgics 
writes suggestively of the influence of Thomson's Seasons in 
helping to make agriculture a mode in French literature. He 
remarks briefly on the translations and poems of Delille, on Les 
Saisons of Saint-Lambert, and on Les Mois of Roucher. But 
no one has studied Thomson's Seasons as a development of the 
georgic type, the chief model of those eighteenth century " geor- 
giques francaises " that represent no attempt to convey 
practical instructions, but still illustrate almost all the motives 
of Vergil's Georgics. Professor W. P. Mustard has contributed 
an article on " Vergil's Georgics and the British Poets," 28 
in which he points out definitely almost every passage in British 
literature echoing or imitating the Georgics, gives a list of Eng- 
lish poems " professedly or manifestly " imitations of the Ver- 
gilian didactics, and notes a number of the favorite Vergilian 
conventions; but it does not fall within his purpose to discuss 
the georgic as a literary type. 

It would require prolonged investigation to prepare one's self 
for a complete treatise on the georgic as a type. In my re- 
stricted study of the subject I shall attempt, first, to define the 

22 Cp. Somerville, Preface to The Chase; Akenside, The Pleasures of the 
Imagination. 

23 Cp. Cowper, footnote to The Task, ni, 429, a misquotation of Qeorg. n, 
82; Gray's note on Ode to Spring. 

24 Thomson's Seasons and Castle of Indolence, Oxford, 1891. 

25 G. C. Macaulay, James Thomson, London, Macmillan & Co., 1908. 

26 Palaestra, lxvi. 

27 Op. cit., Introd., p. xxxvii. 

28 Am. J. Phil., xxix, 1 ff. 



^ 



S The Georgic 

georgic as a type and to study it with special reference to its 
relation to the pastoral; second, to sketch the most prominent 
features of the historical development of the georgic; third, to 
write in detail, so far as my material permits, the history of 
English georgics that treat of general agriculture, of gardens 
and of field sports, discussing also to some extent the didactics 
on these themes that occur in French and in Italian. 29 



29 My information concerning the subject in Spanish and German is 
casual, since I have excluded both literatures from the range of my study. 
I am not aware of any georgics in Spanish; and the type, except as it is 
developed in Thomson's Seasons, seems to have found little favor among 
German writers. For the influence of Thompson's Seasons on German 
literature, cp. K. Gjerset, Der Einfluss von James Thomson's " Jahres- 
zeiten " auf die deutsche Literatur des achzehnten Jahrhunderts. Heidel- 
berg, 1898. 



< 

V 



The Creation of the Georgic Type 



CHAPTER II 



The Creation of the Georgic Type 

1. Vergil's Georgics: Their Relation to the Works and 
Days of Hesiod. 

The pastoral has come down to us from Theocritus, largely t/ 
thru Vergil. The georgic, also, originated with the Greeks. 
Varro * names many writers among the Greeks who wrote of 
agriculture. Some, he says, treated the same subject in verse, 
as for example, Hesiod of Ascra, and Menecrates of Ephesus. 
The verses of Menecrates however, remain mere tradition. Of 
Meander's Georgics, 2 there are left only fragments that in no 
way confirm the suggestion of Quintilian, 3 that Vergil followed 
him ; nor do any other critics point out that Vergil owes more 
to Elcander than the borrowings from the Theriaca* The 
georgic may be said to have originated with the Works and 
Days of Hesiod, but it has come down to us as a literary form 
thru Vergil, whose Georgics owe far less to Hesiod than his 
Eclogues owe to Theocritus. The Eclogues are little more than 
artificial copies, often mere translations, of Theocritus; yet 
the world does not fail to acknowledge the charm with which 
Vergil has invested them as his own. Names as great as those 
/ of Horace, Milton, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Macaulay, are 
found in the list of their admirers ; but none the less, not only 
the literary conventions, but also much that is best in them, 

1 Varro on Farmmg. Translated by Lloyd Storr-Best, London, G. Bell 
& Sons, 1912, p. 5. 

2 Nicander lived in the 2nd c. B. C. The fragments of his lost works 
are edited with a Latin translation by A. F. Didot, Poetae Bucolici et 
Didactici. Graece et Latine. Paris, 1862, p. 1(? 7 . 

z Instit. Orat., x, 1, 56. 

4 Cp. T. E. Page, P Yergili Maronis Bucolica et Georgica, Macmillan and 
Co., 1910, notes on Georg. in, 425, 430, 513. 



10 The Georgic 

Vergil owes to Theocritus. Even the landscape portrayed in 
them may sometimes he recognized as that of Sicily. 

Many influences were at work in the poems that Sellar de- 
clares to he ' almost the only specimens of didactic poetry that 
the world cares to read.' And there is much of Hesiod in Ver- 
gil ; hut it is Vergil, not Hesiod, who created the literary form 
of the georgic. 

Some idea of the Works and Days may he had from the title 
page of Chapman's Translation, 5 " The G-eorgicks of Hesiod, 
hy George Chapman: Translated elaborately out of the Greek. 
Containing Doctrine of Husbandrie, Morality and Piety, with 
a perpetual calendar of Good and Bad Daies ; Not Superstitious, 
hut necessary (as far as natural causes compell) for all men 
to observe, and difference in following their affaires." More 
tersely, Aristophanes sums up the matter {The Frogs, 1033, 
translated by Hookham Frere) : 

Next came old Hesiod, teaching us husbandry, 
Ploughing, and sowing, and rural affairs, 
Rural economy, rural astronomy, 
Homely morality, labor and thrift. 

Hesiod does not purport to write a systematic treatise on 
agriculture. He begins by invoking the Muses, and continues 
with a personal address to Perses, his brother, who has wronged 
him, and seems in need of advice. Here ensues a moralization 
on strife ;. then the story of Pandora is told, in explanation of 
the necessity of toil, and of the difficulties of life. From this, 
arises an account of the Golden Age, and the evil days that 
followed thereafter. Perses is exhorted to justice and work, 
and is given various wise counsels. Then the poet cries, " Now 
if thy heart in thy breast is set on wealth, do thou thus and 
work one work upon another " ; an interesting introduction to 
what may be called the only purely georgic part of the Works 
and Days, for the labors that are to bring Perses wealth are the 
labors of the husbandman. Hesiod follows his exhortation by 

"London, 1618. 



The Creation of the Georgic Type 11 

a series of desultory precepts concerning husbandry; when to 
plow and how to plow, what signs to follow, what evils to avoid. 
After this, he proceeds with advice concerning seafaring, the 
time to marry, the pouring of libations to the gods, and other 
miscellaneous matters. Then follows a calendar of lucky and 
unlucky days, and the poem concludes, " Therein happy and 
blessed is he, who knowing all these things, worketh his work, 
blameless before the deathless gods, reading omens and avoid- 
ing sin." 

From this sketch it may be seen that Hesiod's poem is not a 
carefully planned, artistically perfect structure. Even through 
the medium of a prose translation, 6 nevertheless, the work has 
a singular charm. In Chapman's couplets, much of this is 
inevitably lost; but in Professor Mair's prose, the freshness, 
the vigor of style, the personality of the poet, carry the reader 
back to earlier ages when philosophy walked in homely garb, 
and the world learned as yet little from libraries, much from 
life. Hesiod is counsellor, husbandman, and poet. Stories of 
gods and men he knows, superstitions, perhaps for all his scorn 
of women, old wives' tales. He has lived in the fields, has 
learned the signs that Nature has set for man to read, and he 
is at home with the winds and the stars. 

Vergil grew up among the woods and plains of Italy, a coun- 
try boy with a poet's soul, a poet's clear-sighted eyes, and finely 
attuned hearing. But he became conversant with the learning 
of his day. He absorbed the teaching of generations of poets 
and philosophers ; and at the beginning of his poetic career the 
glory of Lucretius was still new. He professes to sing the song 
of Hesiod, 7 and he builds upon the model of Lucretius. He 
enriches his poems with wisdom gleaned from writers on natu- 
ral history and astronomy, and makes them practical by sound 
precepts, drawn not only from his own experience, but from 
the tested writings of authorities such as the Carthaginian 
Mago, the Greeks Democritus and Xenophon, the Latins Cato 

6 Hesiod, translated by A. W. Mair, Oxford, 1908. 

7 Ascraeumque cano Romana per oppida carmen, Georg. n, 176. 



s 
1 



12 The Georgia 

and Varro. And he writes steeped in the inspiration of Lucre- 
tius. But the life that he depicts is the life that he knew, 
Italian life against a background of Italian landscape. In the 
making of his poems he reveals himself a reader of books, a 
lover of philosophy, but a greater lover of his native land; a 
good husbandman, and a wise giver of advice, but over and above 
everything a great poet. 

An account of the sources of the Georgics may be read in any 
important history of Koman literature, and in most of the de- 
tailed studies of Vergil's work. His indebtedness may be 
traced in detail, thru various scholarly editions of the Georgics. 
Sellar's book is particularly valuable with regard to the rela- 
tions between Vergil and Lucretius, and to the part that Maece- 
nas played in the composition of the poems. Maecenas probably 
had some influence in Vergil's choice of a subject peculiarly 
suited to the policy of the times, a policy begun with the ill- 
fated efforts of the Gracchi. Luxury and vice had inevitably 
followed in the wake of Roman conquest. Long civil wars had 
torn the country, and men loved the soldier's life of daring and 
adventure better than steady quiet, the routine of the farmer's 
toil. The city's lure was probably very much then what it is 
now. Moreover, during the long wars, there had been times 
when the regular government was almost suspended. ' Right 
had become wrong, and wrong right ; the fields lay waste, their 
cultivators being taken away, and the crooked scythes forged 
into swords ' (Georg. i, 505-8). Only a revival of the ancient 
Roman principles could restore the ancient Roman greatness. 
A new theme was offered to the poet. ' Others that in song 
might have held frivolous minds were now all grown common- 
place ' {Georg. m, 2-4). Vergil felt the inspiration, and so 
composed the poems that were to celebrate the arts of peace, 
the glorification of honest toil, the praises of his native land. 

Naturally, the didactic was the form selected for the poem. 
It has been suggested that Vergil was fired by a desire to be- 
come the Hesiod, 8 as he was already the Theocritus, of the 



8 Cp. Sellar, op. cit., p. 175. 



The Creation of the Georgic Type 13 

Komans. And in the Be Berum Natura, Lucretius had shown 
the great possibilities of didactic poetry. With utmost reverence 
for the work of Lucretius, but with fine understanding of his 
own powers, Vergil gave himself to the writing of the Georgics, 
perfecting the meter that Lucretius had suggested to him, and 
adapting Lucretius' plan to his own needs. 

2. Subject Matter of the Georgics 

The Georgics are written in four books, each a complete poem, 
dealing, as the name implies, with a subject connected with 
agricultural pursuits. The first book treats of the preparation 
of the soil;, the second of planting, grafting and pruning; the 
third of cattle ; the fourth of bees. 

The subject matter of the poems may be analyzed as follows: 

Book I 

1-5. Address to Maecenas, announcing the subjects of the 
four poems. 
5-42. Address to the rural deities; Augustus eulogized, 
named as one of the gods. 
43-63. Of preparing soils; the time to sow; of winds and 
other variations of the weather. Products pecu- 
liar to different soils. Digression on foreign 
countries and their products. Allusion to the 
story of Deucalion. 
63-70. The time to plow. 
71—117. Of alternating crops; treatment of poor lands. 
117-159. Annoyances that harass the farmer, due to Father 
Jove's desire to strengthen men by teaching them 
the use of their powers. Of the Golden Age. 9 
Necessity of constant work, warfare and prayer. 

9 In his treatment of the Golden Age, Vergil partly follows Hesiod in 
accepting it as a former age, carefree and happy. But Hesiod regards the 
passing of the Golden Age as a punishment of the gods for the theft of 
Prometheus; just as the Biblical tradition makes the loss of Eden a 



14 The Georgic 

160-175. Farm implements described. 

176-230. Precepts concerning precautions against various an- 
noyances ; the signs of a good season ; the prepara- 
tion of seeds; necessity for observation of the 
constellations. 

231-259. Episode of the five zones. 

259-275. Labors that may be done in wet weather; on holy 
days. 

276-286. Of favorable and unfavorable days. 

287-310. Winter relaxations and occupations. 

311-334. Of autumn tempests; a storm described. 

335-350. Fearing the elements, observe the skies, venerate the 
gods; offer the annual rites to Ceres; Ceres' 
rites 10 described. 

351—464. Weather signs; warnings of the sun and moon. 

465-497. Signs and omens attending Caesar's death. Horrors 
of the resulting civil war. 

498-514. Prayer to the gods to preserve Caesar to save a lost 
and ruined age, wherein the plow has none of its 
due honor, and mad Mars rages over all the globe. 

Book II 

1-8. Preceding subject stated; new subject announced. 
Bacchus invoked. 
9-90. Varieties of trees ; best method of cultivating differ- 
ent varieties. 
91-109. Great variety of vines; impossibility of naming all. 
110-135. Products peculiar to different regions; to foreign 
lands. 

punishment for the eating of the forbidden apple. Vergil's conception is 
nobler, his practical philosophy bears a curious analogy to the apostolic 
teaching of the strengthening power of tribulation. This may or may not 
be the core of Vergil's religious belief, but it is the most characteristic 
passage of the Georgics, emphasizing the central theme of the poem, — the 
necessity and the value of hardships and continual labor. 
10 The Ambarvalia. 



The Creation of the Georgic Type 



15 



136-176. 

177-258. 

259-314. 
315-345. 
346-370. 

371-379. 

380-396. 

397-419. 
420-458. 



459-474. 
475-494. 



495-540. 



541-542. 



Panegyric of Italy, blessed above all other lands. 

Of soils ; different qualities adapted to different pro- 
ducts; of testing soils. 

Methods and time of planting and pruning. 

Descriptive episode — of Spring. 

Further precepts concerning the care of vines and 
trees. 

Of protecting the vine from cattle, especially from 
the wild goat. 

Digression — of the sacrifice of the goat to Bacchus ; 
rural feasts in Bacchus' honor. 

Of the husbandman's recurring labor. 

Gifts that earth supplies of herself, or in return for 
little care. Various uses of trees, gifts better 
than those of Bacchus. Allusion to the battle of 
the Centaurs. 

The blessings of country life contrasted with the 
troubled luxuries of cities. 

Prayer to the Muses — first, that the poet be granted 
to know the causes of things. This denied, the 
love of woods and streams and fields. He is blest 
who has cast aside superstition and the fear of 
death, but he is blest also who knows the rural 
gods. 

Continuation of the praise of country life; the life 
led by the Romans of old, whereby their country 
became the greatest of the earth. 

Conclusion, — But we have travelled over an immense 
space ; it is time to loosen the reeking necks of our 
steeds. 

Book III 



1-9. Subject stated, cattle and their guardian deities; 
necessity of choosing a new theme. 
10-39. A future poem allegorically described. 
40-48. Meanwhile the subject requested by Maecenas (no 
light task), must be pursued. 



16 



The Georgic 



49-102. 



103-145. 
146-156. 
157-208. 
209-283. 

284-285. 

286-288. 
289-293. 



294-321. 
322-338. 



339-383. 

384-403. 
404-413. 

414-439. 
440-469. 

470-532. 



Of breeding cattle. (66-68, A mournful reflection 
interposed on the quick passing of the best in 
human life.) 

A chariot race described; of chariot racing. 

Of the gadfly; allusion to the story of Ino. 

Of training calves and colts. 

Ill effects of blind love on man and beast. 

But meanwhile time flies, as beguiled by love of the 
subject we linger upon each detail. 

Enough of flocks, the task remains to treat of woolly 
sheep and shaggy goats. 

The poet realizes the difficulty of his subject, but his 
cherished desire leads him to the neglected heights 
of Parnassus, where no poet has trodden before. 

The care of sheep and goats, especially in winter. 

A shepherd's summer day, from the first appearance 
of the morning star to the rising of cool Vesper 
and the dewy moon. 

Shepherd life in foreign lands, in the tropics and in 
the arctic regions. 

Precautions in the securing of wool; of milk. 

Advice not to neglect the care of dogs; the value 
of dogs as protectors and in the chase. 

The care of folds; pests that must be destroyed. 

Causes and signs of distress among sheep; preven- 
tives and remedies. 

Frequency of plagues among cattle; description of 
a cattle plague. 



Book IV 



1-7. Subject announced ; " The divine gift of aerial 
honey.'' 
8-32. Of sites for hives. 
33-50. Of hives. 
51-66. Of hiving swarms. 
67-87. Battles among the bees; how to check such contests. 



The Creation of the Georgic Type 17 

88-102. Of choosing the victorious leader, and the better 
subjects. 

103-115. Of plucking the King's wings to prevent battle; of 
inviting the bees with gardens. 

116-148. Were the work not so nearly ended the poet might 
sing of gardens, for he remembers the wonders 
wrought by a poor old man of Tarentum, with his 
garden and his hives; but prevented by limited 
space he must leave the task to others. 11 

149-218. Natural qualities and instincts of bees. Their com- 
munity life; their customs. 

219-227. Beliefs in pantheism and immortality held by some 
as a result of the intelligence observed in bees. 

228-250. Of collecting honey. 

251-280. Care of sick bees. 

281-558. Of recovering the loss of a whole stock of bees. Epi- 
sode of Aristaeus, whose bees were destroyed in 
punishment of his crime against Eurydice. 

559-566. Conclusion. Reference to composition of the Ec- 
logues. 

The foregoing outline may give some idea of the difficulties 
and of the possibilities of the georgic. Eor me to attempt a 
criticism of Vergil's work would be alike unnecessary and un- 
profitable; the world has too long justified the truth of the 
poet's words (Georg. iv, 5-6): 

in tenui labor; at tenuis non gloria, si quern 
numina laeva sinunt auditque vocatus Apollo. 

The arguments for and against didactic poetry need no re- 
petition. Even those most prejudiced can not deny Vergil's 
success. The heaviest charge brought against him is that he 
is not concerned to make his teachings practical, but that he 
uses homely details only as a foil to poetic situations and de- 

u " A graceful interpolation, sketching what might have been a fifth 
Georgic." — Conington, op. cit. 



18 The Georgic 

scriptions. 12 There is testimony, however, that even Vergil's 
most prosaic teachings have been read with delight; and Page 13 
notes a curious proof of the neglect of the valuable matter con- 
tained in the Georgics. According to the Encyclopedia Bri- 
tannica/ 4 at the beginning of the eighteenth century the alter- 
nation of crops was just becoming a common practice in Eng- 
land, a great improvement upon the previous and common us- 
age of exhausting the land and then letting it recover its 
strength by lying fallow. In Georg. i, 7-83, this improved sys- 
tem had been recommended by Vergil eighteen centuries before. 
It is probably true that no peasant ever drew material pro- 
fit from the Georgics, and it is certainly true that Vergil's 
poems are not addressed to the uneducated. But a proof that the 
Georgics have been of influence in life as well as literature may 
be had from the statement of Pierre Larousse 15 that the lean- 
ing towards agriculture of the learned Italian scientific farmer, 
Felippo Re, was decided by the reading of Vergil's Georgics. 



12 Cp. T. DeQuincey, "The Poetry of Pope," The Collected Writings, ed. 
D. Masson, Edinburgh, 1890, vol. xi, p. 91. 

13 Op. cit., Introd., xxxvn. 

14 S. v., Agriculture, c. 2, § I. 

15 Grand. Diet. Univ. du XI Xe Sieele, T. 13. 



The Relation of the' Georgic to the Pastoral 19 



CHAPTER III 



The Relation of the Georgic to the Pastoral 
1. Distinction between the Georgic and the Pastoral 

The etymology of the term pastoral is a guide to the narrower 
meaning of the word, a meaning still given in the Century 
Dictionary, — " Pastoral, a poem describing the life and man- %f 
ners of shepherds." But pastoral is used also to characterize 
any literature that describes a simple rural life, such as Burns' 
Cotter s Saturday Night, or Walton's Compleat Angler, which 
Hazlitt x calls " the best pastoral in our language." 

Eclogue, ' a selection,' and idyll, ( a little picture,' or ' sl little 
poem,' would seem broader in meaning than pastoral. But 
thruout English literature all three terms have been gener- 
ally used as synonyms ; hence the development of the incon- 
gruous types of so-called pastorals, and eclogues, and idylls, 
such for example as the pastoral elegy, the allegorical eclogue 
or pastoral, the piscatory eclogue, and the town eclogue. 2 Theo- 
critus' poems are named Idylls. But Cowley 3 in his essay 
Of Agriculture, writes, " Theocritus (a very ancient poet, but 
he was one of our tribe, for he wrote nothing but Pastorals)," 
altho as Mr. Kerlin says, half the idylls of Theocritus are 
not poems of rural life. 

Vergil, presumably, called his imitations of Theocritus Bu- 
colics, 4 and in Georg. iv, 565, he alludes to them as " carmina 
pastorum." According to Page, the grammarians probably 
gave them the name eclogues. The indiscriminate use as syno- 

1 W. Hazlitt, " On John Buncle." The Bound Table; a Collection of 
Essays on Literature, Men, and Manners, 3rd ed., London, 1841. 

2 Cf. R. T. Kerlin, Theocritus in Eng. Lit., Lynchburg, Va., 1910, App. 2, 
p. 181. 

3 A. Cowley, Essays and Other Prose Writings, ed. by Alfred B. Gough, 
Oxford, 1915, p. 141. 

4 Cf . Page, op. cit., Introd., x, n. 1 and n. 2. 



20 The Georgic 

nyms of the four terms, Idyll, Bucolic, Eclogue, and Pastoral, 
seems therefore based on Roman authority, a fact which Mr. 
Kerlin fails to mention. Vergil's " carmina pastorwm " and his 
Georgics are usually edited together, either as Bucolics and 
Georgics, or as Eclogues and Georgics. This may be one reason 
why the pastoral and the georgic are still so frequently con- 
fused ; another reason may be due to the fact that the fashions 
of the pastoral, as of the georgic, owe so much to Vergil. 

Georgic 5 means literally ' earth-work,' or ' field-work/ hence 
a poem that treats of work in the fields, of husbandry, or more 
broadly, of rural occupations. According to Addison, 6 " the 
Georgic deals with rules of practice. A kind of poetry that 
addresses itself wholly to the imagination; it is altogether con- 
versant among the fields and woods, and has the most delightful 
part of Nature for its province. It raises in our minds a pleas- 
ing variety of scenes and landscapes, while it teaches us, and 
makes the dryest of its precepts look like a description. A 
Georgic therefore is some part of the science of husbandry, put 
into a pleasing dress, and set off with all the beauties and em- 
bellishments of poetry." 

In noting that the georgic deals with rural occupations its 
agreement with the pastoral is seen at once. Both have the same 
background, and shepherd life may be depicted in both. In 
both one finds the element of delight in country life. But in 
Addison's definition the words " science " and " rules of prac- 
tice," strike at once a vital difference. The georgic, as Vergil 
planned it, purports to instruct scientifically by means of tech- 
nical terms and a use of practical details. The writer, speak- 
ing in the first person, recounts his experience for the reader's 
benefit, incidentally making use of various ornamental devices. 
The pastoral, as Theocritus and Vergil left the form, never 

5 Gk. 777, the earth, root epy of epyov work. It is interesting to note 
that altho Vergil goes to the Greeks for the names of his poems, he does 
not owe them either to Hesiod or Theocritus. Chapman called his trans- 
lation " The Georgicks of Hesiod," after Vergil. Vergil probably owes the 
name to Nicander. 

e Op. cit. 



J 



The Relation of the Georgic to the Pastoral 21 

assumes directly the purpose of instructing. It is most often 
dramatic in nature, and the characters are frequently repre- 
sented as speaking, or singing, often in dialogue. The shepherd / 
of Vergil's pastoral does not suggest the idea of toil. Neither 
is he bowed under the weight of responsibility, troubled unduly 
by the doubtful blessing of ownership and family cares. He 
does not scruple to neglect his sheep for love of some scornful 
maid ; often he watches over the possessions of another, and ho 
does not dare even to wager a fat lamb, if an inconvenient step- 
mother waits at home to take count of the returning flocks. 
He has his share of grievances, but his occupation is one wherein 
he may pass joyous and comparatively idle hours, in which, 
like Tityrus reclining under the shade of a spreading beech, he 
meditates the woodland muse on his slender reed. 

The pastoral themes are few, the singing match, the dirge, t / 
the love lay, the conventional forms fixed by Theocritus and 
imitated by Vergil, who " by including among his Bucolic pieces 
the famous ' Pollio ' " 7 added thereto the panegyric, so marked 
a feature of the georgic, and with his " freer use " of the pas- 
toral disguise is accredited with having given rise to the pasto- 
ral allegory. But no matter what the theme, there is always 
in the setting of the poem an atmosphere of golden days, a re- 
moteness from the practical business of life. Daphnis is dead, 
but he " delights in restful peace," and his companions are 
happy in erecting an altar to him. Meliboeus is driven from 
his fatherland, a mournful exile, but his grief only serves to 
heighten the effect of the idle joys of the fortunate Tityrus, 
Tityrus who is allowed to remain piping under the beeches' 
shade. Shadows fall from the mountains as the sun declines, 
but of storm clouds and devastating rains one hears almost 
nothing. The tragedies, as well as the petty ills that mark the 
constant struggle of life, are left aside. The shepherd sings 

7 Cf. C. H. Herford, ed. of the Shepheards Calendar, London, Macmillan 
& Co., 1907, Introd., xxx. Herford does not note the fact that Vergil found 
both the panegyric and the Pollio motive of pastoral peace in Theocritus. 
Cp. Idylls, xvi and xvn. 



22 The Georgic 

untroubled by the swift and cruel passing of time. What sor- 
rows he has are the sweet sorrows of youth ; he experiences no 
foreshadowing of the weight of responsibility and the bitter 
coming of old age. And so, the pastoral that Vergil left as a 
model for future generations has come down to us signifying 
* almost always the dream of Arcadian life. Little wonder that 
a frivolous queen and her short-sighted court should have for- 
gotten a starving peasantry while playing at the pastoral. 

True, there are pastorals of the conventional type that dwell 
more or less upon the petty ills of life; for example, in the 
eclogue of Severus Sanctus, De Mortibus Bourn, 8 two herds- 
men converse on the subject of a cattle plague; the evils of life 
seem largely responsible for the bitter tongues of Mantuan's 
shepherds ; Spenser not only satirizes the failings of church and 
state, but he shows the discomfort of the shepherd's life, draw- 
ing a bleak picture of " rancke Winter's rage." Thus the old 
Thenot rebukes the suffering Cuddie (" Februarie," 9-24) : 

Lewdly complainest thou, laesie ladde, 
Of Winters wracke for making thee sadde. 
From good to badd, and from badde to worse, 
From worse unto that is worst of all, 
And then returne to his former fall? 
Who will not suffer the stormy time, 
Where will he live tyll the lusty prime? 
Selfe have I worn out thrise threttie yeares, 
Some in much joy, many in many teares, 
Yet never complained of cold nor heate, 
Of Sommers flame, nor of Winters threat, 
Ne ever was to Fortune foeman, 
But gently took that ungently came; 
And ever my flocke was my chief care, 
Winter or Sommer they mought well fare. 

Thirsis, in Eclogue i, of Sabie's Pans Pipe, 9 complains of 
the death of a ewe, and the loss of a " tidie lamb " that the 
' Fox did eate,' while the shepherd slept under a thicket, Ty- 

8 Anthologia Latina, ed. A. Eiese, Leipzig, 1906, n, 334. 

9 Reprinted by J. W. Bright and W. P. Mustard, Modern Philology, vn, 
433 ff., April, 1910. For Sabie's debt to Mantuan, see pp. 436 ff. 



/ 



The Relation of the Georgic to the Pastoral 23 

terus seeks to console him with proverbial wisdom, but Thirsis, 
paraphrasing Mantuan, bitterly replies: 

Good counsell Tyterus, but not so easily followed, 

Man is born in griefe, and grieueth at euery mishap. 

I think we shepheards take greatest paines of all others, 

Sustaine greatest losses, we be tryed with daylie labour, 

With colde in winter, with heat in summer oppressed, 

To manie harmes our tender flockes, to manie diseases 

Our sheep are subject, the thiefe praies ouer our heardlings, 

And worse then the thief, the Fox praies ouer our heardlings, 

Thus we poor heardsmen are pinched and plagu'd aboue other. 

But Spenser's Thenot finds time to discourse at length to the 
unhappie Cuddie, and ends by telling his willing listener a 
long fable ; Sabie's Thirsis, who refuses to be comforted by pro- 
verbial wisdom, allows himself to be kept awake, and even 
diverted, by Tyterus' account of an " ancient love." And the 
great bulk of pastoral literature hardly touches upon the rugged 
ways of life ; it depicts the shepherd of Arcadia, whether Arca- 
dia be England, or Italy, or Trance. 

Repeating the first line of the Eclogues with a slight varia- 
tion, Vergil ends his fourth Georgic: 

illo Vergilium me tempore dulcis alebat 
Parthenope, studiis florentem ignobilis oti, 
carmina qui lusi pastorum audaxque iuventa, 
Tityre, te patulae cecini sub tegmine fagi 10 

The traditional date of composition of the Eclogues is from 
42 to 37 b. c. According to Vergil's own words he was ' bold 
thru youth when he lightly made these songs of shepherds ' ; 11 
it is natural enough that they should be mainly concerned with 
love and happiness. The Georgics were composed later, between 
the years 37 and 30 b. a, when the poet was no longer bold, 
but courageous with the experience and wisdom of later years. 
If the phrase omnia vincit Amor 12 is characteristic of the 
eclogue, the phrase labor omnia vicit 13 is even more character- 

10 Eel. i. 1. Tityre, tu patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi. 

11 Georg. iv, 565. " Eel. x, 69. M Georg. i, 145. 



J 



24 The Georgic 

istic of the georgic; for the georgic is concerned mostly with 
work, little with leisure, altho it depicts the farmer's life 
thru all seasons of the year. It shows glimpses of rural 
festivities, as in i, 299 fL, n, 385 fL, n, 527 fL, and idyllically 
peaceful scenes that have the golden age quality of the pastoral, 
as in the closing passages of the second book. But thruout 
these scenes, upheld by a noble ideal, the poet writes in a far 
higher key than in the pastoral. Unlike the shepherd lad, the 
husbandman bears the responsibility of ownership, the weight 
of family cares. Tilling his soil, or in moments of enforced 
leisure, making ready the " arms " with which to conquer the 
difficulties in his way, he takes earnest thought how he may get 
the best from that which is his own, and provide for the family 
that depends upon him. He wastes no time lamenting scorned 
affection, nor does he spend words vaunting the beauty of his 
love. He rejoices calmly in the happiness of wedded life, — 
his sweet children hang on his neck, his ' chaste house keeps 
its purity.' 14 The greatness of Kome depends upon a virtuous 
family life, upon ' a youth enduring in labour, accustomed to 
frugality.' 14a 

But while in the Georgics Vergil shows glimpses of a golden 
age and the gifts that Earth offers of herself, he never lets his 
reader quite forget the necessity of constant labor. And there 
is realism enough in the often quoted lines, in, 66-68, 

Optima quaeque dies miseris mortalibus aevi 
prima fugit; subeunt morbi tristisque senectus 
et labor, et durae rapit inclementia mortis, 

and in the account of the evils and dangers that threaten men 
daily, from the small annoyances of the insatiable goose and 
the Strymonian crane to the splendid fury of devasting 
storms. With respect to their treatment of rural life, Vergil's 
Bucolics are fittingly called Eclogues, ' selections.' In the 
Georgics the poet attempts to deal broadly with the whole. 

With respect to its conventional form, the georgic may be 
analyzed as follows: 

14 Georg. n, 524. Wa Georg. n, 472. 



The Relation of the Georgic to the Pastoral 25 

Subject matter : A rural occupation. 

Central theme: The glorification of labor; the praise of 
simple country life in contrast with the 
troubled luxury of palaces. 

Treatment: Didactic, with precepts varied by digres- 

sions arising from the theme, or related 
to the subject matter. 

Chief features: Formal opening, a statement of the sub- 
ject: this followed by an invocation to 
the Muses or other guiding spirits. 

v/ Address to the poet's patron. 

Panegyrics of great men. 

Mythological allusions. 

^References to foreign lands, [their pro- 
ducts, climate, customs. 

Time marked by the position of the con- 
stellations. 

Proverbial sayings. 

Moralizations and philosophical reflections. 

Discussion of the Golden Age. 

Discussion of weather signs. 

Description of country pastimes. 

Descriptions of Nature. 

Love of peace;, horror of war. 

A lament over present day evils, which are 
contrasted with the virtues and glories 
of the past. 

Ehapsody on the poet's native land. 

A long narrative episode, — in Vergil, the 
story of Aristaeus. 



/ 



26 The Georgic 

2. The Pastoral, a literary type of frequent occurrence, 
made famous by great poets; the Georgic, a literary 
type coincidentally neglected. 

The " abundance of criticism " spent on the pastoral, and 
the coincident neglect of the georgic is easily explained; in 
part, by the frequent occurrence of the former type, the com- 
parative rarity of the latter; in part, by the great beauty of 
certain pastoral compositions, the tediousness of almost all 
georgic poetry. A type of poetry of frequent occurrence neces- 
sarily excites critical interest. If, at its first appearance, a 
literary product is justly condemned, criticism, like the unfor- 
tunate effort itself, is apt to die soon ; but if for any reason 
worth considering a composition takes a strong hold on the 
public, tho only temporarily, it is assured a certain importance 
in literary history; and if a work may be rightly judged a 
classic, younger critics will constantly arise, inspired to discuss 
it from different points of view. A type of poetry, difficult in 
form, infrequent of occurrence, and seldom successful as litera- 
ture, naturally excites scant comment, and that rarely of a 
kind to beget new critical effort. 

Many poets, among them the greatest and the least, have 
written pastorals. It requires no especial courage to take up 
the oaten reed. The poet has little to lose by failure; if he 
succeed, he knows that the world will listen in spite of itself. 

/But no great poet since Vergil has written a georgic, and 
comparatively few of the minor poets have attempted the task. 
Burns, who, as far as practical experience goes, was best fitted 
to appreciate a georgic, or to attempt to write one, declares 
upon reading " Dryden's Virgil " that he considers the Georgics 
" by far the best of Virgil," and that " this species of writing " 
has filled him with " a thousand fancies of emulation." 15 But 
when he compared his powers with Vergil's, his courage failed. 
Robert Anderson 16 expresses the opinion that to write a truly 

u Letter to Mrs. Dunlop, May 4, 1778. 

16 British Poets, Vol. xi. Preface to Dodsley's "Agriculture." 



The Relation of the Georgic to the Pastoral 27 

excellent georgic is one of the greatest efforts of the human 
mind. And the frequent attacks upon didactic poetry in gen- 
eral, upon georgic poetry in particular, indeed the occasional 
defenses of the georgic, emphasize the fact, that, to attempt 
this form of writing, one must have the courage that leads to 
an undertaking which promises almost certain defeat. 

In the period immediately following Vergil, the pastoral as 
a genre had apparently lost popular favor. Earlier than 
Calpurnius 1T there appear to have been no imitators of 
either Theocritus or Vergil whose work survived. 18 Of the 
writers following Calpurnius, only JSTemesianus is named as 
worthy of any regard. Boccaccio, however, in a summary of 
the history of pastoral verse, includes both Calpurnius and 
Nemesianus in his contemptuous utterances concerning pastoral 
writers. He names i the Syracusan Theocritus ' and ' Vergil, 
who wrote in Latin,' then adds: " Post hunc autem scripserunt 
et alii, sed ignobiles, de quibus nil curandum est, excepto inclyto 
Praeceptore meo Francisco Petrarca ". 19 

Of the stream of pastoral poetry during the Middle Ages, 
Greg observes 20 that " though it nowhere actually disappears, it 
is reduced to the merest trickle." From the fourth to the tenth 
century, isolated examples occur that served to preserve the 
classical memory of the pastoral, reworked, however, with new 
meanings and new associations under the influence of Chris- 
tianity. 

With the fourteenth century, a new and brilliant epoch be- 
gins in the history of the pastoral. In the sixteenth century, 
Spenser found the genre " a literary mode that beyond all 
others lent itself to the expression of his complex emotions." 21 

17 Calpurnius' dates are uncertain. He is sometimes supposed to have 
lived at the end of the third century. For a clear discussion of the subject, 
cp. C. H. Keene, The Eclogues of Calpurnius and Nemesianus, London, 1887. 

18 Cp. Conington on " The Later Bucolic Poets of Rome," op. cit., Vol. 
i, p. 114. 

19 Lettere di G. Boccaccio, ed. Corrazini, p. 267. See Walter W. Greg, 
Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama, London, 1906, p. 18. 

20 Op. cit., p. 18. » Herford, op. cit. Introd., p. xxvi. 



J 



28 The Georgic 

E. K. counts among Spenser's predecessors, Theocritus, Ver- 
gil, Mantuan, Boccaccio, Marot, Sannazaro, " and also divers 
other excellent both Italian and French poets, whose footing 
this author every where followeth." Spenser was the chief 
British influence in the popularizing of the conventional pas- 
toral; but the form occurs in British verse as early as the 
fifteenth century, in Henryson's Robin and Makene; and be- 
fore that the shepherd stories of the Bible had been made fa- 
miliar to English audiences in the vernacular drama, and in 
the liturgical plays of the Nativity. From Spenser's time on, 
the pastoral is found in England, as on the continent, in more 
or less closely related groups, and in varying types of varying 
worth. 

The georgic, a type of poetry that except in some of its 
eighteenth-century developments cannot be said ever to have 
made a truly popular appeal, is in its recurrences compara- 
tively rare. While Vergil was yet living, parts of his Georgics 
appear to have been parodied. 22 Gratius, who was contempo- 
rary with Vergil, wrote a treatise on hunting, evidently imi- 
tating the model of the Georgics. In the first century after 
Christ, Columella felt it a sacred duty to develop Vergil's sketch 
of gardens, Georg. iv. 116-148. In the second century, Op- 
pian of Cilicia wrote his so-called golden verses on the " Fisher- 
man's Art," the H&lieutica, and somewhat later another Op- 
pian (of Apamea) wrote a poetic treatise on hunting, five 
books of which are extant. In the third century, RTemesianus 
composed a poem on hunting, more like the treatise of Gratius 
than that of Oppian of Apamea. In the fourth century, Pal- 
ladius, imitating Columella, wrote in elegiac verse, on the 
cultivation of trees (Bk. xiv of his Husbandry). How much 
poetry in imitation of the Vergilian didactics may have seen 
the light from the fourth to the thirteenth century, only to be 
buried sooner or later in obscurity, I cannot say. I know of 
nothing in the nature of a georgic during this period, except 

22 Cp. Addison : Essay on the Georgics. 



The Relation of the Georgic to the Pastoral 29 

the poem that Biese 23 calls " the much-read Hortulus," Walah- 
frid Strabo's De Cultura Hortorum, " an idyll of the cloister 
garden," written about 820. 

In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, there occur in 
France a number of treatises in verse on the noble arts of hunt- 
ing and hawking ; 24 and a poetical treatise on fishing, entitled 
De Vetula, is said to have been written by Richard de Fourni- 
val at this period. 25 In the fourteenth century, in Italy, 
Paganino Bonafede wrote some verse precepts on agriculture, 
entitled II Tesoro dei Rusticij 26 but no one seems to have con- 
sidered the effort worth publication. In the fifteenth century, 
very little is found ; Halliwell and Wright 27 print a Fragment 
of a Poem on Falconry, written in French at the beginning of 
the period. Dame Juliana Berner's verse treatise on " Ve- 
nerie " made part of the famous Bolce of St. Albans, which 
appeared in 1486. To the year 1420, is referred the curious 
old English poem by Piers of Fulham, entitled " Yayne con- 
seytes of folysche love undyr colour of fyscheng and fowl- 
yng," 28 a composition less interesting as an attempt at an alle- 
gory than for its information concerning fish and fowlT Some- 
time in the period following Chaucer, an unknown English 
writer put the treatise of Palladius on Husbandry into Chau- 
cerian stanzas, with original prologues and epilogues, and occa- 
sional moralizations of his own; and one original English pro- 

23 A. Biese, The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle 
A.ges and Modern Times, translated from the German. London, 1905, p. 61. 

24 Cp. E. Jullien, La Chasse. Son Histoire et sa Legislation. Paris. 
Aubertin, Hist, de la Langue et de la Litt. Francaises an Moyen Age 
d'apres les Travaux les plus recents. Paris, 1878, T. n, pp. 64 ff. 

25 See "The Angler's Library," The Edinburgh Review, Vol. 158, 1883, 
p. 160. The writer states that the De Vetula was formerly attributed to 
Ovid. I have been unable to identify R. de Fournival. 

26 Cp. Tiraboschi, op. cit., T. V, n, 864. 

27 t Wright and J. 0. Halliwell, Reliquae Antiquae, London, 1841. Vol. 
I, p. 310. 

28 Reprinted by W. C. Hazlitt, in Remains of the Early Popular poetry of 
England, Vol. h. London, 1866. For the date of the poem, see J. J. Man- 
ley, " Literature of Sea and River Fishing," Internat. Fisheries Exhibi- 
tion, 1833, The Fisheries Exhibition Literature, Vol. m, p. 563. 



J 



80 The Georgic 

duction, georgic tho not Vergilian, belongs to the fifteenth 
century, a treatise in verse by " Mayster John Gardener " en- 
titled the Feate of Gardening. 2 ® In Italy, Poliziano's Rusticus 
appeared in 1483, a Latin poem still highly praised, which 
Dunlop 30 describes as " an abridgement of the Georgics." Be- 
fore 1500, Gioviano Pontano imitated certain features of the 
Georgics in his Urania, and in his didactic poem Meteora; and 
he produced a true Yergilian georgic in the De Hortis Hesper- 
idum. 

In the sixteenth century, the pastoral is a favorite type of 
poetry in Italy and France. With the publication of the Shep- 
heards Calendar the genre in England enters upon a golden 
age. Until the end of the century the pastoral holds its vogue. 
Critics may scorn the type as they will, but they cannot disre- 
gard the instrument that Spenser and Ben Jonson and Shake- 
speare saw fit to adapt to their needs. The pastoral conven- 
tions lend themselves readily to affectations and artificialities, 
but they are forms in which the poet may express lyric joy and 
sorrow, romantic emotion, dramatic passion. The georgic, pri- 
marily didactic, purporting to treat of practical arts, offered 
little appeal to an age in which life seemed a great adventure. 
Represent ative Elizabethans seem to have found no possibili- 
ties in the Vergilian type of didactic poetry. So far as I have 
been able to discover, Thomas Tusser and Thomas Moffat are 
the only sixteenth-century Englishmen who regarded georgic 
precepts as matter fit for verse. In 1557, appeared Tusser's 
Hundreth Pointes of Goode Husbandry, later augmented to 
Five Hundred Pointes, a " profitable, and not unpleasant " 
georgic, which, however, owes nothing to the Vergilian conven- 
tions. Moffat's poem. was not printed until 1599. Collier 31 
quotes the title page as follows, " The Silkewormes and Their 
Flies: Lively described in verse by T. M. a Countrie Farmar, 

29 Archaeologia, London, 1894. 

30 Op. cit., p. 138. 

31 J. P. Collier, A Bibliographical Account of the Rarest Books in the 
English Language. London, 1865, Vol. I, p. 539. 



The Relation of the Georgic to the Pastoral 31 

and an apprentice in Physicke. For the great benefit and en- 
riching of England. Printed at London by V. S. for Nicholas 
Ling, and are to be sold at his shop at the West End of Paules. 
1599. 4to., 41 leaves" Collier informs the reader that near 
the close of the first book, the poet mentions having been in 
Italy, adding in a marginal note that this was twenty years 
before he published his poem. Moffat's Italian visit is a simple 
explanation of this late sixteenth-century English georgic. The 
art of raising silkworms is among the favorite themes of 
Italian didactic poets, particularly in the sixteenth century. 32 

In France during this period a few treatises on hunting are 
found. 33 From Jullien's account they appear to be written 
more or less according to the model of the georgic. Among 
them is Claude Gauchet's Plaisir des Champs, an interesting 
poem in which pastoral love songs, descriptions of the chase, 
and georgic eclogues are mingled at the poet's fancy. 

In Italy, during the sixteenth century, so great was the ven- 
eration for the classics, that not only was the pastoral a favorite 
fashion, but the georgic too, for the first time in its history, 
received notable appreciation as a genre. The georgic themes, 
and the georgic plan are adapted to many subjects treated both 
in Latin and in Italian verse: didactics on general agriculture, 
as Luigi Alamanni's Coltivazione and Tansillo's Podere; on 
special branches of farming, as Pierio Yaleriano's De Milacis 
Cultura, and the poems of Giustolo da Spoleto, Yida, and Te- 
sauro on silkworms ; on rural sports, as Valvasone's Caccia; on 
seafaring, as Baldi's Nautica. In Tansillo's Balia noble ladies 
are exhorted to nurse their own children, and the same writer's 
V endemmiatore, characterized by Greg 34 as " one of those ob- 
scene debauches of fancy which throw a lurid light on the lux- 
urious imagination of the age," may be considered as a bur- 
lesque of a noble georgic theme. 

32 Cp. the following list: Lodovico Lazzarelli, II Bombyx, 1493; P. Gius- 
tolo da Spoleto, De Sere, 1510 ; Girolamo Vida, Bombyces, 1527 ; Alessandro 
Tesauro, La Bcreide. 1585; Zaccaria Betti, II Baco da Seta, 1756. 

33 See Jullien, op. cit., ch. x and xi. M Op. cit., p. 32. 



32 The Georgic 

In the seven teen tli century, the golden age of pastoral is 
ended; nevertheless, the genre persists, chiefly in the forms of 
the lyric and of the drama. John Donne and Herrick are 
found among English writers of pastoral lyrics ; Milton reaches 
the " high water mark of poetry " in Lycidas, and immortalizes 
the pastoral masque in Comus. The period furnishes little 
material for the history of the georgic. I know of nothing of 
the type in Italy, except ISTicolo Partenio Giannettasio's Ha- 
lieutica, a work that I have been unable to see. In 1613, John 
Dennys' Secrets of Angling, a poem based manifestly, if not 
professedly, on the model of the Vergilian didactics, was pub- 
lished at London. 35 In 1665, Rene Rapin's Horti was pub- 
lished at Paris. Dennys' Secrets probably set other English 
writers scribbling verses on the gentle craft. 36 Rapin's Horti 
may have incited Richard Richardson to write a Carmen de 
Cultu Hortorvm, published at London, 1669. It is safe to say 
that if the seventeenth century begot many other georgics, they 

/have either perished or become lost in obscurity. One must 
look to the eighteenth century for the culmination of the type. 
s j In the early years of the eighteenth century, a great deal is 
heard about the pastoral. English critics, influenced by the 
French views of Fontenelle and Rapin 37 are pleased to dis- 
course upon the true nature of pastoral poetry; English poets 
continue to write pastorals. The story of the Philips-Pope 
controversy is not a highly edifying chapter in the history of 
English literature, but because of it John Gay wrote the Shep- 
herd's Week. The pastorals of Pope and Philips are artificial 
specimens of the genre; and it is generally agreed that in the 
eighteenth century the type is brought to be a thing of scorn. 

35 The date of composition of this poem is uncertain. John Dennys died 
in 1609. 

36 See, for example, Thomas Barker, Bwrker's Delight : or the Art of 
Angling, 1657; S. Ford, Piscatio, or Angling, a poem written originally in 
Latin, 1692, translated by Tipping Sylvester, 1732; The Innocent Epi- 
cure, or The Art of Angling, A Poem (attributed to Nahum Tate), Lon- 
don, 1697. 

37 Cp. Greg. Op. cit., p. 415. 



y 



J 



The Relation of the Georgic to the Pastoral 33 

Yet, even among eighteenth-century pastorals there are found 
compositions of undeniable charm; in the Shepherd's Week, 
Gay proved himself truly a poet; Shenstone has nowhere so 
light and delicate a touch as in his Pastoral Ballad; and Allan 
Kamsay's Gentle Shepherd can still be read with delight. 

In 1697, Addison made his complaint about the critics' ne- 
glect of Vergil's Georgics* 8 Up to that time, unless Moffat's 
Silkwormes be excepted, no true English georgic of the Ver- 
gilian type seems to have appeared. John Gardener's verses 
are rudely made precepts ; Tussers's Husbandry though less rude 
is no more Vergilian than John Gardener's effort. John Den- 
nys wrote not of husbandry, but of angling, 39 and Dennys is 
not concerned with the pursuit of the sport as a means of sup- 
plying the larder, but rather with the exercise of gentlemanly 
virtues and gentlemanly skill. Dennys' seventeenth-century 
followers probably wrote in much the same vein. John Barker, 
to be sure, gives recipes in verse for the cooking of fish, but 
altho his verses are a shade more skilfull than those of John 
Gardener, his worst enemy could hardly have accused him of 
having tried to imitate Vergil. 

In 1700, there is found an angling poem, entitled The Gentle 
Recreation, or the Pleasures of Angling, a slight work, written 
rather pleasantly, by John Whitney, " a Lover of the Angle," 
and, from the testimony of his verses, a lover of Vergil. In 
1706, appeared the first English poem of any importance, in 
which a true georgic theme is treated in the manner and spirit *S 
of Vergil's Georgics, John Philips' Cyder. The influence of 
this didactic on English poetry of the eighteenth century was 
considerable. No one has ever suggested that it had any in- 
fluence on French and Italian poetry. Perry, 40 however, states 

38 Cp. above, p. 1. 

39 It is interesting to note, however, that in the Epitome of the Art of 
Husbandry, by I. B. Gent, London, 1669, there are "brief Experimental 
Directions for the right use of the Angle." See W. B. Daniel, Rural Sports, 
London, 1812. Supplement, p. 16. 

*"T. S. Perry, English Literature in the Eighteenth Century, N. Y., 
Harper and Brothers, 1883, p. 139. 

3 



34 The Georgic 

that Cyder was much admired in Italy, and that it was trans- 
lated into Italian. In 1749, the Abbe Yart translated Philips' 
georgic into French. Whether or not it had been put into 
French before then, I am not able to say. 

It is hazardous to suggest that Italian interest in georgic 
poetry needed to be revived thru England's example. Yet the 
fashion of the georgic seems to have sprung into European favor 
along with the Anglomania manifested in the passion for 
English gardens. In Italy, as in France, I know of nothing in 
the nature of an eighteenth-century Vergilian didactic, previous 
to the publication of Thomson's Seasons in 1744. Philips' geor- 
gic may or may not have aroused interest in a type of poetry 
never before held in much favor by the French, and, apparently, 
neglected by the Italians for more than a hundred years. There 
is no doubt, however, of the great influence of Thomson on 
European poetry in general. It is well known that the Seasons 
were read, translated and imitated by almost all the civilized 
nations of Europe. Thomson has been called " the father of 
the landscape garden;" certainly he made nature poetry a 
literary fashion. Suddenly, thru him, the world-old course of 
the months and the seasons seemed to reveal to the poets sen- 
sations as enchantingly new as the emotions of love. The hus- 
bandman's life was to be sung once more as the ideal existence. 
Saint Lambert 41 writes thus : " La poesie champetre s'est en- 
richie dans ce siecle d'un genre qui a ete inconnu aux anciennes. 
.... Les Anglois et les Allemands ont cree le genre de la 
poesie descriptive: les anciens aimoient et chantoient la cam- 
pagne, nous admirons et nous chantons la nature." Further 
on in his preliminary discourse, the poet speaks of his Saisons 
as georgies made for those who possess the fields, not for those 
who cultivate them. Other poets, imitating the Vergilian 
model, as Thomson adapts it to his use in the Seasons, give 
their efforts the sub-title <c georgiques frangaises" 42 

11 Op. eit., p. xv. 

42 See, for example, J. Delille, L'Homme des Champs, ou Les Georgiques 
Francoises, cp. above, p. F. J. de Bernis, Les Quatre Saisons, ou Les Georgi- 
ques Francoises, first published, Paris, 1763). 



The Relation of the Georgic to the Pastoral 35 

To the influence of both Philips and Thomson the long list 
of eighteenth-century English imitations of the Georgics must 
be ascribed. Philips and Thomson were wise enough, or for- 
tunate enough, to choose a model that appealed strongly to Eng- 
lish poets of their day. Naturally, in a neo-classic age, Yergil 
was reverenced as a classic writer. A great poet, he had loved 
the outdoor world, and he had read into the heart of Nature. 
More than this, he had prayed the Muses to reveal to him the 
causes of things, and he had woven into his didactics something 
of the philosophic and scientific beliefs of the ancients. As a 
model, he made a strong appeal to the new school of poets, who 
yearned to sing in praise of country life; and he made an 
equally strong appeal to the eighteenth-century taste that de- 
lighted in attempts to poetize science and philosophy. Much 
of Vergil's teaching found sympathetic response in the eigh- 
teenth-century mind. „ His plan furnished opportunity for 
moralizing and philosophizing, and it offered the advantage of 
the introduction of narrative episodes. Thomson modified Ver- 
gil's plan at his pleasure. Other poets who imitated Thomson 
attempted also to imitate the Georgics in all their features. 
Thruout the century, georgics of various kinds are found. In 
France, one finds a comparatively long list of eighteenth-century 
didactics of the Vergilian type. In Italy, not only is the genre 
revived in a long series of new attempts, but sixteenth-century 
Italian georgics are brought into the light, read and reread as 
masterpieces of Italian genius. In England and France, as 
well as in Italy, it becomes the fashion not only to imitate 
Vergil, but to imitate old and new imitations of Vergil. Early 
Vergilian didactics appear in reprints and translations. 43 Al- 
most every variety of the georgic occurs, from treatises on gen- 
eral farm life like Vaniere's Praedium Rusticum and Dodsley's 

43 One finds, for example, in the eighteenth century, French, English and 
Italian translations of Oppian's Gynegetica; English and Italian transla- 
tions of Oppian's Halieutica. From 1716 to 1781, Alamanni's Coltivazione 
was printed twenty times ; Tansillo's Podere and La Balia were printed for 
the first time in 1769, and La Balia was translated into English in 1798 as 
The Nurse, by William Roscommon. 



J 



/ 



36 The Georgic 

Agriculture to burlesques like Gay's Trivia, in which the Ver- 
gilian conventions are used in a poem treating of the art of 
walking London streets. The eighteenth-century vogue of the 
Vergilian type of didactic poetry is among the most interest- 
ing phenomena of an age pre-eminently interesting in the his- 
tory of literary developments. 

The pastoral, as has been seen, played a not unimportant 
part in the literary history of the early eighteenth century. In 
the nineteenth century, it remained for Shelley and Matthew 
Arnold to stir the world with the supreme beauty of their 
pastoral laments. True to classic traditions, Tennyson's 
Oenone wails in bitterness the unfaith of her royal shepherd. 
The English Idyls are reminiscent of the Syracusan poet. Pro- 
fessor Mustard thinks that ' the very title of these poems is 
meant to suggest their close relationship to the Idyls of The- 
ocritus '. 44 The traditions of the ages are not easily over- 
thrown. Even in the twentieth century, pastorals may still be 
found, poems of modern life, in a setting of rural beauty and 
outward peace, eternally old; but these poems fall under the 
broad definition of the pastoral, the conventional type seems 
at last to have become a dead fashion. 

In the first quarter of the nineteenth century, the georgic type 
still persists, examples occurring in French, in English, and 
in Italian. 45 T. Deyeux's Chassomanie, a didactic on the 
chase, appeared as late as 1844. However, even to scholars, 
most of these productions are generally unknown, and unless 
Deyeux's curious poem be excepted, it may be said that after 

44 W. P. Mustard in The Classical Weekly, vm, 166. For a complete dis- 
cussion of the relation of Tennyson to Theocritus, see W. P. Mustard, 
Classical Echoes in Tennyson, N. Y., The Macmillan Co., 1904, ch. iii. 

45 Among these specimens may be mentioned Delille's Homme des Champs, 
1800; J. E. Esmenard's Navigation, 1804; an anonymous poem on Fowling, 
1808; James Grahame's British Georgics, 1809; Thomas Pike Lathy's bold 
fraud, The Anglers, 1819; Mazzoni, op. cit., p. 78, names a list of Italian 
didactics, presumably of the Vergilian type, such as C. Arici's La coltiva- 
zione degli ulivi, 1805; Lorenzo Crico's La coltivazione del grano-turco, 
1812. 



The Relation of the Georgic to the Pastoral 37 

the first quarter of the nineteenth century the genre seems to 
have passed completely out of existence. The fate of the Ver- 
gilian didactic appears to be sealed, until in the twentieth cen- 
tury at least two remarkable developments of the type are 
found in the Primi Pobmetti of Giovanni Paseoli, 46 and in Les 
Georgiques chretiennes of Francis Jammes ; 47 Pascoli's Poem- 
etti, idylls of country life that Miss Ruth Shepherd 48 calls " a 
kind of modern Italian georgics, dealing under the same skies 
and against the same landscapes with the descendants of those 
who ploughed or kept bees in the Vergilian poems ;" Jammes' 
Georgiques chretiennes, religious idylls of the French hus- 
bandman, poems that Miss Amy Lowell describes as " a whole 
book dealing with the agricultural labors of a year ". 49 

3. Variations in the development of the Georgic compared 
with variations in the development of the Eclogue. 

The conventional pastoral occurs chiefly in the forms of the 
/eclogue, the lyric, the pastoral romance, and the pastoral drama. 
The eclogue is, in itself, inherently lyric, and dramatic ;. and in 
it is found also the germ of romance. The evolution of the type 
comes about naturally, since evolution is the nature of living 
things. 

It has been seen that even in the hands of Vergil the pas- 
toral as a literary form shows development, for in Eclogue IV 
Vergil professedly uses the panegyric in a rural song, 50 and 
continually in his " carmina pastorum" he veils an undercur- 
rent of allusion, personal and political. From time to time, 
later writers continue to adapt the old conventions to new 

46 Bologna, Ditta Nicola Zanichelli, 1907. 

47 Paris, Mercure de France, 1914. 

48 See Miss Shepherd's article, "Giovanni Paseoli," in the North Am. 
Rev., July, 1916. 

49 Amy Lowell, Six French Poets, N. Y., Macmillan Co., 1915. 

Sicelides Musae, paulo maiora canamus! 

Non omnes arbusta iuvant humilesque myricae; 

Si canimus silvas, silvae sint consule dignae. 



38 The Georgic 

themes. As early as Calpurnius, a poem is found in which 
georgic subject matter is used in the eclogue form. Mycon, 
an older shepherd in Calpurnius' fifth Eclogue instructs his 
pupil, Canthus, concerning the management of sheep and goats. 
Eclogues I, IV and part of Eclogue VII are in praise of the 
Emperor. They are written in strains of adulation that sug- 
gest Vergil's address to Augustus in the first Georgic; but the 
theme of panegyric, as has been observed, is not new in the 
eclogue, and belongs equally to the conventions of the pastoral 
and of the georgic. In Eclogue VII, however, a new theme 
occurs. A shepherd, just returned from the town, recounts his 
experiences for the benefit of an untravelled friend. He con- 
trasts the life of the town with that of the country, a subject 
treated frequently, and with many variations, by later writers 
of the eclogue. 

In the middle ages, dating from the end of the fourth or the 
beginning of the fifth century, the old forms are adapted to 
Christian themes. The eclogue is used to celebrate the praises 
of the " saint cress," to prove the truth of the Bible stories, 
victorious over the falsehood of pagan myths, to voice allegori- 
cal religious laments, and to give honor to the saints. 51 

In the fourteenth century, Petrarch discovered the value of 
the pastoral machinery as a vehicle for veiled satire. Boccaccio 
uses the traditional pastoral material in the making of the first 
modern pastoral romance. 52 Mantuan uses it for direct satire, 
introducing the diatribe against woman, the contrast between 
town and city dwellers, the denunciation of clerical evils, the 
contrast between a virtuous past and a corrupt present. 53 San- 
nazaro, presumably imitating Idyll XXI of Theocritus, set a 

61 Cp. Greg, op. tit., p. 19 ; W. P. Mustard, " On the Pastoral Ancient and 
Modern," The Classical Weekly, March 27, 1915, p. 162. 

62 Sometime between the second and the sixth century, a Greek, called 
Longus, wrote the pastoral romance of Daphnis and Chloe. Greg thinks 
that this work played no part in the evolution of the earliest modern shep- 
herd romances. 

63 This and the contrast between town and city dwellers are also favorite 
georgic themes. 



The Relation of the Georgic to the Pastoral 39 

new fashion in the piscatory eclogue, in which he makes the 
speakers fishermen, instead of shepherds, the setting " pisca- 
tory," instead of pastoral. 

In the Comedia nuova pastorale of Giambattista Casalio of 
Faenza, a composition placed somewhat before 1538, Greg 54 
recognizes " what may almost be regarded as the first conscious 
attempt to write a pastoral play." There seems, however, to 
be no adequate treatment of the evolution of the pastoral 
drama. Greg's view is that " the theatrical tendency first ex- 
hibited itself in the mere recitation of a dialogue in character," 
the earliest example of these so-called ecloghe rappresentative 
being identical in form with those written merely for literary 
circulation. 55 As early as the tenth century, European audi- 
ences had become familiar with the shepherd figures of the 
religious dramas, and later with the shepherds of the medieval 
miracle plays. 56 However, it cannot be said that these pastoral 
traditions had any more influence on the evolution of the mod- 
ern pastoral drama than the romance of Daphnis and Chloe is 
said to have had on the modern pastoral romance. Neverthe- 
less, in the case of English literature one can grant that " the 
shepherd's plays of the religious cycles, the popular ballads, 
and a few of the Scots poets of the time of Henryson, all alike 
furnish verse which may be regarded as the index of the readi- 
ness of the popular mind to receive the introduction of a formal 
pastoral tradition." 5T 

The most striking minor variations in the pastoral are due, 
presumably, to Sannazaro and the vogue of his piscatory 
eclogues. " Nautical " or " naval eclogues " are attempted in 

54 Op. tit., p. 172. 

55 See Greg, " On the Origin and Development of the Italian Pastoral 
Drama," op. cit., App. i, p. 429. 

56 In the Towneley Secunda Pastorum, the shepherds appear, complaining 
like Spenser's Cuddie, of the biting cold. They also enumerate in georgic 
fashion a list of the evils of their time. In the Chester Shepherd's Play, a 
remarkable passage is introduced, in which, in the manner of the georgic, 
the shepherds discuss the diseases of sheep, and their cures. 

57 See Greg, op. cit. p. 417. 






40 The Georgic 

which sailors speak, 58 " venatory eclogues," songs of huntsmen, 
"vinitory eclogues/' songs of vine dressers; " sea eclogues," 
songs of Tritons and mermen ; and " mixed eclogues," in which 
the speakers are a fisherman and a shepherd, or a woodman, 
fisher, and a swain." 59 

In the eighteenth century, the pastoral formulas are bur- 
lesqued in a series of town eclogues, 60 and further variations of 
the type are found in Gay's Quaker Eclogue, in Mrs. Barbauld's 
School Eclogue, and in Shenstone's Colemira, A Culinary 
Eclogue. 

The georgic, like the pastoral, is found in many variations. 
Vergil sings of tillage, of the culture of trees, of cattle, and of 
the " divine gift of aerial honey." The poet may take his 
choice of subject from any special branch of husbandry, and 
write a poem that answers to the definition of a georgic in the 
narrowest meaning of the word. Vergil, (Georg. in, 404-413), 
tells the farmer not to neglect the care of dogs, useful for pro- 
tection against thieves, and valuable in the chase. He remarks 
(Georg. iv, 116-148), that he would like to write at greater 
length of gardens; he infers (Georg. i, 456-457), that in the 
face of certain signs it will be useless to advise him to cross the 
deep; Hesiod before him, in The Works and Days, had given 
advice concerning sea-faring. Vergil's suggestions seem to have 
offered the fatal fascination of themes " as yet unsung," — 
hence the long list of forgotten or neglected poems that follow 
more or less closely the didactic type perfected in the Georgics. 

The first important variation of the type is found in Gratius' 
adaptation of certain georgic features to the subject of the 
chase, the huntsman instead of the farmer being advised con- 

08 Cp. Kerlin, op. oit., p. 66. 

59 For the venatory variation cp. Petri Lotichii Secundi Solitariensis, 
Poemata quae exstant omnia, Dresdae, MDCCLXXIIL Eel. i and ii. For 
examples of the other variations, cp. The Piscatory Eclogues of Jacopo 
Bannazaro, Ed. W. P. Mustard, Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins Press, 1914. 
Introd. pp. 21, 33, 42, 43, 48. 

60 See Kerlin, op. cit., pp. 59 ff. 



The Relation of the Georgic to the Pastoral 41 

cerning the implements and methods of his art. Corresponding 
to the venatory eclogue there occurs the " cynegetic," which may 
be styled a venatory georgic. Annibale Cruceio's Alcon* 1 
usually attributed to Fracastoro, is an imitation of Calpurnius' 
My con that illustrates the crossing of the types of the venatory 
georgic and the venatory eclogue. Alcon, an old huntsman, in- 
structs a younger companion concerning the care of hunting 
dogs. The work is of especial interest in that it shows how 
closely the pastoral may be related to the georgic in a variation 
of both types. 

From the pursuit of creatures on the land to the pursuit of 
creatures on the deep, there is but a step. Vergil, (Georg. i, 
139-142), declares that at the end of the Golden Age men had 
begun to hunt and fish : 

turn laqueis captare feras et fallere visco 
inventum, et magnos canibus circumdare saltus; 
atque alius latum funda iam verberat amnem 
alta petens, pelagoque alius traliit umida lina. 

Oppian of Cilicia was probably familiar with the lines. At any 
rate, he wrote the Halieutica, a poem on deep-sea fishing that 
shows familiarity with Vergilian conventions. Later poets 
treat similar themes, showing more or less indebtedness to Ver- 
gil, rather than to Oppian. Corresponding to the piscatory 
variation of the pastoral there occurs the piscatory variation of 
the georgic. Hazlitt 62 calls The Compleat Angler " the best 
pastoral in our language," but The Compleat Angler may be 
said to be georgic as well as pastoral. John Whitney's Dialogue 
between Piscator and Corydon is an eclogue of mixed character, 
in which a fisherman and a shepherd discuss their respective 
pleasures and profits, are entertained by pastoral songs celebrat- 
ing country joys and virtues, and encourage each other with 
georgic reflections and moralizations. 

61 N. E. Lemaire, Poetae Latini Minores, Vol. I, p. 171. For a comment 
on the authorship of the poem see E. Carrara, "La Poesia Pastorale," 
Storia dei generi Letterari Italiani, Milan, p. 408. 

62 Op. cit. See above, p. 19. 



42 The Georgic 

In the sixteenth century, Bernardino Baldi, inspired by the 
characteristic georgic desire to tread untrodden ways, wrote La 
Nautica, in which he uses the georgic conventions and the Ver- 
gilian plan in a versified treatise on sea-faring, 63 and thus pro- 
duced a nautical georgic corresponding to the nautical or naval 
eclogue. Thomas Kirchmayer, like the medieval writers of 
eclogues, adapted georgic themes to Christian teachings. In his 
Agricultura Sacra, man, the spiritual husbandman, is instructed 
in the care of the estate of his soul. 64 Fracastoro, who has fre- 
quently been compared to Vergil, used Vergil's framework in a 
poem entitled Syphilis, sive de Morbo Gallico. Tansillo, inter- 
ested also in physical welfare, undertook to sermonize in verse 
on the method of rearing high-born infants. 65 

In the seventeenth century, Bapin, in his Horti, (Bk. i, 11) 
suggests that some one write a medicinal georgic. Conington 66 
observes that before the time of Nemesianus, Serenus Sammon- 
icus had written 1115 hexameters entitled De Medicina Prae- 
cepta, but adds that this work " is not properly a didactic poem, 
but merely a medical treatise in metre." In the sixteenth cen- 
tury, Paola del Rosso wrote a didactic entitled La Fisica; but 
Ginguene describes it as an abridgement of Aristotle's book on 
physics, severely written, without digressions or ornaments. 
No one seems to have fully carried out Rapin's suggestion. 
Collier 67 describes briefly a work written entirely in verse by 
Edmund Gayton, The Art of Longevity or a Diaeteticall Insti- 
tution. The work, is in thirty-three chapters, treating of the 
wholesomeness or unwholesomeness of every kind of food ; as it 
was " printed by the Author," in 1659, four years after the 
appearance of Rapin's Horti, it may be that Gayton was en- 

63 B. Baldi, La Nautica con Introduzione e note di Gaetano Bonifacio, 
Citta di Castello, 1915. 

64 Cp. C. H. Herford, Studies in the Literary Relations of England and 
Germany in the Sixteenth Century, Cambridge, 1836, pp. 121 ff. 

65 L. Tansillo, " La Balia," L'Egloga e i Poemetti, con introduzione e note 
di Francesco Flamini, Napoli, 1893. 

66 Op. cit., p. 400. 

67 Op. cit., Vol. i, pp. 309-310. 



The Relation of the Georgic to the Pastoral 43 

couraged in his task by the suggestion of the French writer. 
In the eighteenth century, from the point of view of a physician 
and of a poet, John Armstrong wrote a treatise in blank verse 
on The Art of Preserving Health, a variation of the georgic that 
might have satisfied Kapin, had the English poet discoursed 
more on the use of medicines. 

Akenside, whose interest centered primarily in the workings 
of the mind, used the model furnished by Horace in the Epis- 
tles and by Vergil in the Georgies, to write a didactic entitled 
The Pleasures of the Imagination. In his preface, Akenside 
states that he has followed Horace and Vergil as models ; in his 
poem, he illustrates the use of many of the favorite georgic con- 
ventions. In the third book of the first edition of his poems, he 
imitates allegorically Vergil's instructions on soils. Writing of 
the wonder of God's gifts to man, Akenside discourses on Taste, 
telling how the early seeds of love and admiration are sown by 
the Creator in the minds of man, and how constant culture is 
necessary to rear these seeds to bloom; and as Vergil sang of 
differences in the character of soils, so Akenside sings of differ- 
ences in the character of the human mind. 

Gay's Trivia, or the Art of Walking the Streets of London, 
i published 1716, and Soame Jenyns' Art of Dancing, published 
1727, are interesting examples of the burlesque variation of the 
georgic. Both poems are mock heroics in which georgic conven- 
tions are adapted to situations in city life. The eighteenth cen- 
tury produced the town georgic as it produced the town eclogue. 
Writers of the latter are said to have had a model in Theocritus, 
Idyll xv. 68 The very name " town georgic " is in itself striking 
proof of the extent to which the Vergilian type of didactic 
poetry may wander from the scene of field-work. 

Falconer's Shipwreck, published 1762, is another example of 
the varying use of the georgic conventions, the poem being an 
epic with georgic features, such as technical instructions of a 
nautical character, moralizations, geographical excursions, ref- 

** Cp. Kerlin, op. tit., p. 59. 



s 



44 The Georgic 

erences to famous men, the contrast of rural innocence with 
city arts. 

But by far the most important eighteenth century develop- 
ment of the type is that originated by James Thomson in the 
Seasons. Thomson omits the most difficult feature of the Geor- 
gics, the versifying of practical precepts, but he makes use of 
the georgic motives and of almost all the georgic conventions. 
Vergil proposes to teach the husbandman agricultural arts. He 
describes the occupations of the farmer thru the year, refer- 
ring incidentally to the seasons as they are related to the farm- 
er's occupations. Thomson proposes to give an account of the 
course of the seasons, referring incidentally to the farmer's occu- 
pations as they relate to the seasons. Vergil introduces descrip- 
tions of nature, chiefly as background for the husbandman at 
work. Thomson introduces the farmer and his work chiefly to 
give life to his descriptions of nature. Instead of using the 
formal Vergilian statement of the subject, Thomson begins each 
of his poems with an apostrophe to the Season he is about to de- 
scribe; his mythological references are rare, and he can hardly 
be said to introduce pointed proverbial sayings. But if he re- 
frains from the use of proverbial sayings, he makes up by the 
length of his moralizations and of his philosophical reflections. 
He never attempts to convey practical advice directly, altho in 
Spring (137 fi\), after his description of the manner of destroy- 
ing orchard pests, he uses Vergil's personal tone in exhorting 
the swains to patience. All the other features familiar in the 
georgics he uses as freely as he uses Vergil's phrasing. In 
Spring, (142 ff.) and in Autumn (43 ff.) he introduces the cen- 
tral motive of the Georgics, the glorification of labor, but he 
does not use the motive as a central thought. Thruout the 
Seasons he sings the praise of simple country life ; in Autumn, 
almost in Vergil's own words, he paints the existence of the hus- 
bandman, happy beyond the dreams of the great. 

Vergil suggests ; Thomson delights to expand. Vergil touches 
upon various philosophical beliefs; Thomson expounds eigh- 
teenth century philosophical ideas line upon line. In Vergil, 



The Relation of the Georgic to the Pastoral 45 

every word seems necessary to the perfection of the whole; 
Samuel Johnson is said to have pleased an unsuspecting audi- 
ence by reading a passage from Thomson in which he omitted 
every other line. Nevertheless, partly because of what he owes 
to Vergil, partly because much that he has to say is refreshing 
to jaded eighteenth century readers, chiefly because in spite of 
his faults he is a true poet, Thomson offered a variation of the 
georgic that found a welcome not only among the learned, but 
also among readers who had never construed a Latin line. The 
influence of Thomson is seen in English poems planned to imi- 
tate closely the Vergilian model ; but alongside of these didactics 
there are found in English, French, and Italian, imitations of 
the Vergilian model as Thomson adapted it to his use. 69 

Pascoli, in the Primi Poemetti, like Thomson in the Seasons, 
makes no pretence of giving his reader direct practical advice. 
But unlike Thomson, Pascoli introduces no learned allusions, no 
panegyrics, no geographical excursions, no narrative episodes, 
no sorrowful contrast between the past and the present. It is 
the Vergilian spirit, rather than the Vergilian motives, that one 
finds in Pascoli. Reading the Poemetti, one thinks inevitably 
of Millet ; only, too often, Millet fills one with a sense of sadness. 
The atmosphere of the Poemetti, unlike that in so much of Pas- 
coli, is of deep unreasoning content. The Poemetti are a series 
of little pictures, idylls in which are depicted the homely reali- 
ties of the Italian contadinis daily life. To his listening help- 
mate the husbandman repeats proverbial wisdom, 

Sai che, per il grano, 
presto e talora, tardi & sempre male. 
. . . chi con Pacqua semina, raccoglie 
poi col paniere; e cuoce fare in vano 
piii che non fare. 



69 Among the most interesting of the English poems influenced by the 
Thomsonian variation of the georgic type are Goldsmith's Deserted Village, 
Cowper's Task, and William Bloomfield's The Farmer's Boy. Delille's 
Homme des Champs shows the influence of Goldsmith even more markedly 
than that of Thomson. N. G. Leonard's Le Village Detruit, is a weak copy 
of the Deserted Village. Mazzoni, op. cit., p. 79, mentions a nineteenth 



46 The Georgic 

" Some mute star " looks down upon him as he plows ; and the 
young daughters of the house rising at dawn, perform accus- 
tomed tasks. Brown-haired Viola milks the cow ; golden-haired 
Rosa, like Vergil's housewife, sings to the sound of the weaving 
comh and at the command of the " car a pi a madre " helps to 
prepare the simple meal. And when the Angelus rings, mother 
and daughters carry bread and wine to the fields where the 
sowers stand, like Millet's peasants, repeating the familiar 
prayer. 

With the loving minuteness of Vergil, Pascoli describes the 
contadinis daily tasks. Like Vergil he charms the homeliest 
details into verse, and more perhaps than any other poet since 
Vergil, he writes with intimate understanding of the husband- 
man's life. With exquisite simplicity, more perhaps even 
than Vergil, he reveals the poetry of the peasants' religion, the 
nobility of simple tasks wrought with contentment, hallowed 
by the sacred beauty of family love. 

In Francis Jammes' Georgiques chretiennes, there is still 
another development of the georgic type in which practical pre- 
cepts are omitted. However, a number of the conventional Ver- 
gilian features are illustrated, such for example, as the refer- 
ences to foreign lands, their products and customs ; descriptions 
of rural festivities and of rural sports ; the marking of the sea- 
sons by the constellations ; references to famous men ; a lament 
over the desertion of the soil ; and the use of narrative episodes. 
Les Georgiques chretiennes treat of agricultural labors, such as 
harvesting, and sowing, the culture of the vine; but the poet 
does not offer direct instructions as to the methods of farming. 
Like Pascoli's Poemetti, these georgics are idylls of the farmer's 
life ; like the Poemetti, they present a series of scenes in the life 
of one family. 70 Jammes makes an occasional mythological 
reference, but like Pascoli, he introduces no pagan religion. In 
the Poemetti, one hears the sound of the church bell, the sing- 
century Stagioni by Giuseppe Barbieri, and comments upon the European 
vogue of the Thomsonian nature poetry. 

70 In this respect, both series of poems are like Bloomfield's Farmer's Boy. 



The Relation of the Georgic to the Pastoral 47 

ing of religions songs, the prayer of the Angelus ; in the pages of 
Jammes, " harvesting angels " gnard the land no longer pro- 
tected hy the deities of ancient Eome. The French poet invokes 
his angel (chant m, 48 ff.), not the Mnse; he dedicates his 
third song to the " Mere de Dieu " ; and he describes chnrch 
feasts such as Christmas, Eogation Days, and All Souls'. He 
sighs over the desertion of the soil, as Vergil and so many other 
poets have sighed, but the present-day evils that he most deeply 
laments are those brought about by the irreligion of France. 

In spite of certain general resemblances to Pascoli's Poemetti, 
Les Georgiques chretiennes are very different from the Italian 
poems. In plan they are much nearer to the Vergilian type ; in 
spirit far less near to Yergil. As a development of the georgic 
type they are of especial interest; as poems, they offer much 
that is worth while, but they fail to grip the heart with the deep 
and abiding beauty of the Poemetti of Pascoli. 

4. Variations of the Georgic classified. 

A didactic poem of the Vergilian type may illustrate only 
the use of the plan and general treatment of the Georgics, or it 
may illustrate only the spirit and the motives of the Georgics, 
and in plan be quite different from Vergil's didactics. A poem / 
may be a georgic, Vergilian only with respect to subject matter; \f 
it may be Vergilian in form and in subject have nothing in com- 
mon with the true georgic. The Vergilian conventions may be 
used to convey instructions about any practical art, they may be • 
used to impart precepts about a science or a fine art ; they may %/ 
be adapted to Christian themes and allegorical teachings ; they 
may be used for satire and burlesque, or in the telling of a tale. 
Georgic themes may be the subjects discoursed upon by the 
speakers in an eclogue; thus the types cross. And finally, a 
poem that is georgic in motive or subject matter comes under 
the broad definition of the term pastoral. 

The chief variations in the development of the georgic type 
fall into two general classes, which may be sub-divided as S 
follows : 



48 The Georgic 

I. Poems marked primarily by the use of rules of practice. 

a. The georgic in the narrowest sense of the word, a compo- 
sition in which the poet treats of rules of practice concerning 
the science of general husbandry, or of any special branch of 
husbandry such as gardening, bee-keeping or the culture of 
silkworms. 

1. The non-Vergilian georgic, written like Hesiod's Works 
and Days, with no regard for definite plan or artistic structure ; 
for example/ Thomas Tusser's Five Hundred Pointes of Good 
Husbandries John Gardener's Feate of Gardening. 

2. The Vergilian georgic, in which the poet follows a defi- 
nite plan and makes more or less use of conventions peculiar to 
the Vergilian type; for example, Alammani's Coltivazione (of 
general husbandry), Rapin's Hortorum libri IV, Christopher 
Smart's Hop Garden, Ruccelai's Api, Vida's Bombyces. 

b. The cynegetic, the halieutic, or the ixeutic 71 (nearest in 
type to the true georgic) , a composition in which the poet treats 
of rules of practice not concerning field-work but field-sports, 
such as hunting with hounds (the cynegetic), deep sea-fishing 
or angling (the halieutic), and of hawking or the snaring of 
birds (the ixeutic). These efforts may be non-Vergilian in 
form (Dame Juliana Berner's Treatise on Venerie), or they 
may be written in imitation of the Georgics (William Somer- 
ville's Chase). The Oppian poems are among the most inter- 
esting examples of the cynegetic and the halieutic;. Claude 
Gauchet's " Le Moyen de Prendre les Alouettes au miroer " 72 
illustrates a sixteenth-century variation of the ixeutic. 72 

c. A composition in which the poet treats of rules of prac- 
tice concerning any outdoor occupation, as in the nautical 
georgic, a poem on the art of sea-faring; for example, Ber- 
nardino Baldi's Nautica, Joseph Esmenard's Navigation. 

71 The poems of this class will be treated in detail in a subsequent 
chapter. 

72 See Le PlaAsir des Champs, Paris. Edition of 1604. 



The Relation of the Georgic to the Pastoral 49 

d. A composition in which the poet gives direct advice con- 
cerning any practical art. The effort may be a non- Vergil ian 
bit of rhyme, perhaps on some prosaic matter of the housewife's 
province, such as John Gay's Receipt for Stewing Veal. With 
notes by the author 73 ; or it may be a Vergilian didactic fol- 
lowing the georgic conventions, and emphasizing the necessity 
of honest toil and the advantages of country life ; for example, 
John Armstrong's Art of Preserving Health. 

e. A composition in which the poet follows the georgic con- 
ventions, purporting to give advice concerning any art or occu- 
pation; for example Soame Jenyns' Art of Dancing, Gay's 
mock-heroic Trivia, or the Art of Walking the Streets of 
London. 

f. An eclogue in which the characters are concerned with 
rules of practice; as in Calpurnius' My con, John Scott's Amoe- 
bean Eclogue, " Rural Business; or the Agriculturists." 74 

II. Poems illustrating georgic themes or georgic features, but 
not marked primarily by the use of rules of practice. 

a. A composition that treats of rural life, following in part 
georgic ideas and georgic conventions, altho not dealing pri- 
marily with an occupation ; as, for example, Thomson's Seasons. 

b. A composition in which practical precepts are not used, 
altho the poet treats in the Yergilian spirit of farm occupations 
and uses to some extent georgic features; as in Bloomfield's 
Farmer s Boy, Pascoli's Primi Poemetti, and Jammes' Geor- 
giques chretiennes. 

c. A composition in which, for allegorical or philosophical 
purposes, the Yergilian plan is imitated, wholly or in part, 
altho the poet does not treat of a practical occupation and is 
not concerned primarily with country life ; as in Thomas Kirch- 

73 See Chalmer's English Poets, x, 495. 

74 See Chalmer's English Poets, xvii, 469. 



50 The Georgic 

meyer's Agricultura Sacra, and Akenside's Pleasures of the 
Imagination. 

d. An eclogue in which the characters discourse on georgic 
themes; for example, John Whitney's Dialogue between Pis- 
cator and Corydon, Claude Gauchet's " Michaut-Phlippot." 75 

e. A narrative poem with digressions of georgic character : 
as in Falconer's Shipwreck. 



75 See Le Plaisir des Champs, Paris, 1869, p. 86. 



VITA 

I was born in Conewago, Pa., 4 October, 1881. In 1896, 
I entered Notre Dame College, Md., where I was graduated 
with the degree of A. B. in 1900. From 1904-1907, I taught 
English and History in St. Mary's Seminary, a state institution 
at St. Mary's City, Md. I taught English in the family of 
Senor Francisco Santa Cruz, Colima, Mexico, in 1908; and 
English and History in St. Mary's Seminary from 1910 to 
1912. In October, 1912, I entered the Johns Hopkins Uni- 
versity and pursued the study of English, History, and Phil- 
osophy. In June, 1914, I received the degree of A. M. at 
the Johns Hopkins University. I was appointed Fellow in 
English for the year 1914-15, and Fellow by Courtesy for the 
year 1915-16. My studies have been pursued under Pro- 
fessors Bright, Vincent, Magoffin, Ballagh, Willoughby Love- 
joy, Mustard, Collitz, Bloomfield and Shaw. 

This study was undertaken at the suggestion of Professor 
Bright and I have continued it chiefly under his guidance. I 
wish to express my appreciation of the kindness of Professor 
Shaw, who has aided me with the Italian bibliography, and to 
Professor Mustard, who has been unceasing in his helpful sug- 
gestions with regard to the Georgic and the Pastoral. But 
especially, I wish to thank Professor Bright, whose criticism 
has been invaluable to me in the course of this work; and of 
whom I say with gratitude, as do all who have studied under 
him, that he has helped inestimably in an understanding of the 
ideals of scholarship. 

Marie Loretto Lilly. 
August 7, 1917. 



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